Catalogue description Post Office: Telegraphs, Private Companies

This record is held by BT Group Archives

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Date range

Details of POST 81
Reference: POST 81
Title: Post Office: Telegraphs, Private Companies
Description:

This series encompasses the surviving records of a number of early domestic and international telegraph companies which pioneered the development and growth of the public telegraph network.

Please see BT Archives online catalogue (under both POST 81 and TG) and The Postal Museum's online catalogue for descriptions of individual records within this series.

Note: Catalogue entries below series level were removed from Discovery, The National Archives' online catalogue, in November 2016 because fuller descriptions were available in The Postal Museum's online catalogue and BT Archives online catalogue.
Date: 1845-1905
Arrangement:

Note that these records have been rearranged to fit the scheme of arrangement used at BT Archives. The majority of the POST 81 reference numbers are now obsolete. Please contact BT Archives for more information.
Related material:

For general reference to the takeover of Private Telegaph Companies see POST 82

For information on the overseas aspect see POST 83
Held by: BT Group Archives, not available at The National Archives
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 122 file(s)
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure
Custodial history: The Post Office acquired these records when the private companies were taken over by the Postmaster General under the provisions of the Telegraph Acts, 1868 and 1869. This series of records, along with other Post Office telecommunications records, was transferred from the Post Office Archives to BT Archives in 1991.
Administrative / biographical background:

The first of the early telegraph companies was the Electric Telegraph Company, founded in 1846 by Sir William Fothergill Cooke (one of the inventors of the telegraph) and a number of City financiers. Prior to the Post Office takeover in 1870, some of the companies had already amalgamated or been taken over by competitors. For example: the Electric Telegraph Company and the International Telegraph Company merged in 1855, and the London Telegraph Company formally changed its title to London and Provincial Telegraph Company in December 1857.

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